Happy Birthday STRIVR: 3 big moments over 3 years

Two days ago, on January 7, 2018, STRIVR turned 3 years old! Three years ago, we started on a journey to use brand new virtual reality (VR) technology to help train professional and collegiate athletes. After becoming an overnight sensation and blowing people away with the technology, we started helping athletes make better decisions in the key moments and improved their stats. After much success in the athletic arena, we opened our platform to businesses of all kinds who could benefit from better, smarter, and more efficient workers. After Walmart jumped in and paved the way for other corporate organizations to use VR to deliver better training, we turned ourselves into a full-fledged training and learning company.

Today, we are utilizing the latest and greatest in immersive technology to enhance learning and training. We believe immersive technology like VR is how the employee, the athlete, and the individual of the future will learn new abilities, improve knowledge on a topic, and practice important skills. They will use VR to prepare for some of the biggest moments of their lives (whether trying to negotiate a big deal, save someone’s life in surgery, build a car, or score the game-winning points). And then they will execute with perfection.

Here’s a look back on 3 key moments in STRIVR’s history that have paved the way for our success and have gotten us all the way to our 3rd birthday party. Here, we are focusing on major milestones for STRIVR and key quotes direct from our users pointing to the power of this technology and how it is revolutionizing the way people prepare for the big moments. We are glad to be 3, and hope to be celebrating many more STRIVR birthdays in the future.

The first proof point for STRIVR came at Stanford University in 2014. When STRIVR was in the initial stages of development, the Stanford football team used it because despite the early stages and kinks, the technology was having a big impact. The introduction of STRIVR helped the team dramatically at the end of their season, pushing them to a post-season berth and a blowout victory over Maryland in the bowl game. Hogan’s quote above refers to a key play during the Maryland game where he reacted to a situation that he had seen several times before in the STRIVR training environment. Hogan’s deliberate recall of the situation and his correct decision led to a perfect outcome. Hogan said it was easy because it truly was—having watched VR and seen the situation so many times before, he knew exactly what to do.

2. “There’s just so many uses for it. It’s been a great teaching tool.” – Dabo Swinney, head coach of the Clemson Tigers football team

Clemson won the 2017 National Championship in dramatic fashion over Alabama, the reigning champions. Clemson’s introduction of STRIVR a year prior helped their players prepare for any and all situations they would face in a game. Clemson is one of our heaviest users, from the quarterbacks to the linebackers. They have now come to understand how the technology works and try and utilize it in as many ways a possible, all with the same goal in mind: re-creating the field and getting extra repetitions. In the waning seconds of the ’17 Championship Game, QB Deshaun Watson performed flawlessly. In the years since bringing on STRIVR, Clemson has finished National runner-up (2016), National Champion (2017), and National semifinalist (2018). In all, over three seasons, sports teams that use STRIVR have won 15 different league, divisional, or national championships.

3. “VR gives us a practical, scalable way to teach new skills, give associates more confidence in their jobs and make work more exciting and fun.” –Brock McKeel, Senior Director of Central Operations, Walmart

Early in 2017, we decided that sports teams shouldn’t be the only ones benefiting from our technology. Walmart, United Rentals, Fidelity, and others joined the VR training revolution as they started working with us to train their employees. McKeel says employee engagement at Walmart has increased as a result of STRIVR training, even among employees who merely watched co-workers participate in the simulations. He says Walmart still considers better-trained employees the most important outcome, and STRIVR helps achieve that. The Director of training at United Rentals says he can reduce the time spent in training by 40% by using STRIVR. We feel we have just scratched the surface in getting large corporations to realize the benefits of using immersive training to develop and improve their workforce.